The two firms have also closed strategic capacity deal on Sea-Me-We-5, which will run between Europe and Asia.
The partnership will be used to support GCX’s growing market requirements, while the two firms said they are also exploring other opportunities across South America, the Middle East and Asia Pacific which will leverage Sparkle’s Sicily Hub.
“Earlier this year we expanded our reach into Sparkle’s Sicily Hub in Palermo with a multi-service PoP, providing enhanced coverage and increased diversity options to meet the growing demand for high performance, low latency connectivity across Africa, the Mediterranean and the emerging markets,” said Bill Barney, CEO, Reliance Communications and Global Cloud Xchange.
“We are pleased to further expand our partnership with Sparkle across the strategic Atlantic route and into Asia Pacific.”
Sicily Hub was inaugurated in May 2015 and is served Sparkle’s tier 1 grade IP transit service, Seabone, which recently celebrated its 20th birthday. It is connected to an ecosystem of 19 major international subsea cable systems landing in Sicily.
Sparkle CEO Alessandro Talotta recently told Capacity that the Italian carrier has begun taking its first steps from Sicily Hub towards Africa.
On the GCX partnership, Talotta said: “Through our partnership with GCX we will significantly enhance our Spectrum capacity and continue our strategic global backbone expansion plans. This partnership further leverages both companies’ European and American assets, including 100Gbps IP Transit connectivity, improving our ability to meet growing market demands.”
